Even Star Football Players want to READ

In honor of October being Dyslexia Awareness Month, I have done a series of posts to help sort out the differences between Dyslexia and ADHD.  My friends and I are working to share what we have witnessed with a diagnosis and how tutoring can really help.

I found this story a while back on Facebook and while I don't know that the young man has dyslexia, I do think he has a powerful message:  We are all given gifts of different talents.  What means the most to us often is not what comes easy, but what we have to work to achieve.  Take a look at this Steve Hartman called You Can't Judge a Book  by Its Cover.  


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/football-star-shows-you-cant-judge-a-book-by-its-cover/

What did you think?  I shared this story with my sons who are not athletes, but excel in so many other areas.  They do have natural talents, but for one reading is a challenge.  I hope that one day when he is asked, he will say that overcoming his reading struggles is one of his greatest accomplishments.  We have an amazing tutor to thank for much of his success and drive.

-A Kansas Farm Mom

A California Farm Mom Shares Her Son's Dyslexia Story (Part 2)

 Part 2 of a Guest Post from A California Farm Mom.  See what their experience was with testing and tutoring.  Part 1 can be found here.

Toby was tested, which is about a 3 hour process, the day after we arrived & was diagnosed w/dyslexia.  He was also given a score from the TOVA test which grades the ADHD, which we never had a grade for to know the severity of it just a diagnosis.  Immediately after the testing, we began tutoring.  We tutored for 4 hours per day for 7 days.  I had planned our trip so the tutoring would start on a Wednesday & he would be tutored for a few days then have the weekend in the middle of the 7 day stretch to give his brain a break.  After all he was not quite 7 years old at the time & was on Summer break & nearly 2000 miles away from home wondering what the heck am I doing here.

Immediately after the first day of tutoring I could already see changes in our son.  We had gone to a museum after tutoring that first day & he saw a sign that said, "Do Not Enter."  He stood there & was actually trying to sound out the words and read what it said.  He had never done this before & was not interested.  I could see his confidence building in himself as he succeeded in sounding out those words & reading what the sign said.  I was so proud of him.  I had given him one of the biggest hugs ever as the tears began to form in the corner of my eyes.  What an accomplishment!

As the week went on I could see him becoming a happier kid & getting along with his brother better and so forth.  His outlook on life was changing in a more positive way because he was aware of more.  After the first few days, the Department head, Dr. Hurford, and I sat down & had a few words.  He informed me that our son's dyslexia is worse than what he had expected from our visits over the phone, but on a good note he is improving faster than what they thought.  It was a blessing.  This is where I strongly believe in early intervention. He also told me that ideally they would like to have him for a year.  With that said, my heart sunk.  That really told me how severe his dyslexia was/is.  A whole year.  How could this be possible?

Well in life I take everything with a grain of salt.  I wasn't going to commit to a year nor walk away.  I could possibly see a month at a time in the Summer, but a year would be tough.  In my mind I knew that we needed to try to continue & I saw the results that we were getting but where could I get such results back at home, 1950 miles away?  Dr. Hurford's son, Thomas, whom is a college graduate & following in his Dad's footsteps, was doing the tutoring with our son & had already created a bond.  I thought to myself how could we do this.  I'd go back to the hotel room in the evenings & continue researching dyslexia & try to learn all that I could while there & thinking how can we continue this....

Then the idea came to me a few days before we left.  Why not try tutoring via Skype?  We could only try.  They were willing to give it a shot & I knew it would be a very good shot if I could get our son to stay focused at the computer screen with his tutor, Thomas.  Well upon arriving home, we took a week off then went right back to it.  We made a commitment to tutor 2 hours per week, 1 hour on Tuesday & 1 hour on Thursdays.  The first time our son "Skyped" with Thomas, Toby was sitting at the kitchen table, surrounded by his Legos with the iPad right in front of him with his tutor there.  Our son was actually staying focused & working with Thomas through "Skype" on the ipad!!!  Here he was surrounded by the Legos that he loved & without even touching them, Thomas had his complete attention.

I was absolutely amazed & was trying not to jump for joy & break the focusing.  It was a joyful moment for sure.  We continued the tutoring until school started & now we tutor weekly since that really does make for a long day for a young 7 year old, attending school all day then coming home & sitting for another hour being tutored.  So Wednesdays, our son has a shorter day at school & we tutor those days.

I constantly see improvement in our son in working with Thomas.  Not only in his reading & sounding out words, but his self confidence & self esteem.  Some things are still a struggle, but he is improving.  I remind myself that Rome wasn't built in a day, as much as I would like it to be sometimes.

By taking our son to Kansas, for the testing, I was able to get a diagnosis there for him & the help that he needed.  We have returned home with a 8 page report that explains his testing & diagnosis, in which I was able to present to his IEP (Individualized  Educational Plan) of teachers & staff that we meet with at school.  It was a eye opener.  Before when I would mention dyslexia it was like it went through one ear & out the other.  They did not know how to test for it nor how to teach students with it should there be a diagnosis.  I have several teacher friends that I questioned before coming home from Kansas.  "If you had a student that was dyslexic, would you know how to teach them or help them?"  They had no idea.  And not to take away from these teachers because they are good teachers, but the education system is not recognizing this yet.  Not at a level in which it should be & have the support for it.  Remember, 1 in every 5, is possibly is dyslexic.  That's 20%!

With that said, I haven't made any plans yet, but perhaps hoping to go out again this next Summer back to PSU & get some more one on one help and continue the tutoring services of their program.  I can't imagine the struggles that these people go through in life that haven't gotten this help & can't read & don't understand things such as others do.  We all learn things differently and sometimes some just learn even more differently than others.  It might be more time consuming, but in the end it is all worth it.  Our son continues to amaze us at some of the things that he does out on the farm or even in the house playing with Legos and so forth.  He has a very high IQ, but he has just not been able to completely unleash it yet.  We can foresee him possibly being a engineer in the future based upon how he uses his mind to build things & structurally think ahead.  Time will tell.  His speech has been improving since our intervention & his positive outlook on life has drastically increased which is a huge factor in anything that you do in life.  We could not be happier with the results that we are seeing from our participation in the CARRD program, at Pittsburg State University.  We still have a long road ahead but we are also so thankful for the help that we have found.  You know your child best.  My best advice is use your own judgement & follow what your heart tells you.

Sandy vB

Thank you so much for sharing Sandy!  Each child's experience is different and we all do what we think is best for their child at the time. -KFM

For more information check out the post How Do I Sort Through all of this Information of Dyslexia and ADHD? 

A California Farm Mom Shares Her Son's Dyslexia Story (Part 1)

I have shared some about our Dyslexia story.  In the coming weeks, I hope to share many more.  Up today is my friend from college, Sandy.-KFM
Well life can have it's challenges but in the end I strongly believe God only gives us what we can handle.  After our second son, Toby, was born we noticed some things were different from our first child.

We closely observed & made mental notes along the way.  Before the age of 3, he was tested at the UC Davis Mind Institute, in Northern California, to see if he was autistic.  They ruled autism out.  But did suspect ADHD.  From there it still became a guessing game as to what was/is going on.  As we left the mind institute that day with our heads hanging low & our self esteem just as low with no answers, I told my husband, that our son is very smart.  While Toby was in being tested he was telling the psychologist all about tractors & balers & combines, etc. and she was looking at us asking what is he talking about.  I told my husband, if we had turned the tables on her that day & tested her on farm equipment compared to Toby, she would have failed & Toby would have been the genius.  He just isn't into his ABC's & 1-2-3's right now.  He was so advanced in so many ways & his level of intelligence you could see was very high.

After all, we had built a pool in the Fall of 2011 and that next Spring when we took the cover off of it & our youngest son insisted, at not quite 4 years of age, that we needed to put hot water in the pool so we could swim in it.  Well he knew that when you first turn the water on, on the garden hose that had been sitting in the sunshine, that hot water would come out for a bit.  So he would go out to the pool 3-4 times a day & put the hot water in the pool from the garden hose trying to warm up the pool.  Yeah & this is at not even age of 4!

As time moved on, he attended a preschool for a few months where he would be dismissed after a couple of months for being too active.  Although while there, a speech delay was noticed, so he was referred for speech therapy.  From there we were able to get him into a head start program, which was wonderful.  Kindergarten was interesting to say the least and seemed like a waste of a year.

Upon ending his Kindergarten year I still wasn't happy with the educational results that we were seeing.  I was starting to see signs that Toby could possibly be dyslexic part way through his first year in head start & into kindergarten.  I had a local friend, whom is a daughter of a Doctor, whom I had visited with who had a daughter that is now in her mid 20's that had all the same symptoms & was dyslexic.  So she had given me clues as to what to look for.  Her daughter was not diagnosed until 5th grade but all the signs & symptoms were there.   She had more of a struggle getting the staff to believe her & the IEP team than anything.  Our son was stimulated by the numbers, excessive students his Kindergarten year. The school he attended was at about 500 kids, grades K-5 & 30 per classroom with no aides.  It was time for a change.

We looked into the local charter school which would be on it's 4th year from being founded, beginning the following Fall.  There were 25 kids max per class & the school system also requires volunteering by parents.  So when we toured the school every class had at least 1 parent helper & several of them had 2 parent helpers in class.  This really brought the teacher to student ratio down.  This is what he needed.

He had a wonderful 1st grade teacher & an aide & half way through his 1st grade year I was really starting to question myself more & more if our son was Dyslexic.  He was not yet able to rehearse his ABC's completely & to me that is almost something that should be known by the age 3-4.  He would get 1/3 of the way through them & start skipping around w/ the rest of the alphabet.  I saw other signs as well too.  Often he would write numbers & letters backwards & sometimes completely spell out his whole first name backwards.  Spelling was near impossible for him & reading, well it wasn't even possible where as his classmates at the end of their first grade year were already reading.  It was so frustrating.  Then I got a phone call driving home from our county fair one day from my good friend, Nicole Small, in Kansas.

She knew my struggles with our youngest son & had observed him as well, a few times when we were out visiting one another.  She proceeded to tell me about their youngest son.  Their son was struggling with some of the same issues but not quite as bad as our son & she had just taken him to Pittsburg State University, in Pittsburg, Kansas to have him tested for dyslexia.  She had told me that her son was exiting 2nd grade & still hated to do homework & still wasn't reading & after 1 full week at Pittsburg State University & the Carrd Center, her son was now doing his homework & loved reading!!!  What an amazing accomplishment.  She was calling to tell me to try to get me to take our youngest son there when we were out next time.

Well when you go through these struggles & your kids mean the world to you, you try to do what is best for them any way that you can.  When Nicole told me about this program, her word to me as a friend, was good enough advice for me to look into it.  I called back to PSU & talked to the staff about their program and our son & his situation & what struggles he was having, what testing we had been through & so forth.  Immediately yes he said he was a strong candidate for this program.  So then of course, us being from Northern California, I researched local places that I could go for the same kind of service.  The closest place I found was about 1 hour 45 min away & had a pretty hefty price tag & required 2 weeks of schooling for both Toby & I, in addition upon completion of the testing, if Toby would have been found dyslexic.  So instead, I made plans to travel back to Kansas with our boys & proceed with the testing. 

 

Stay tuned for tomorrow, when we see how Toby did at Pittsburg State. -KFM

 For more information check out the post How Do I Sort Through all of this Information of Dyslexia and ADHD? 

Center for Research, Evaluation and Awareness of Dyslexia

Today's Post is from Dr. Hurford of the Pittsburg State University Center for Research, Evaluation and Awareness of Dyslexia and CARRD Center.  If you have questions, please contact him, he knows way more than I do and is more than happy to talk with anyone who needs more help.-KFM

Dyslexia

Approximately 1 in 5 individuals in the United States has dyslexia. Reading failure causes children and their parents a considerable amount of stress. Children begin elementary school with a great deal of enthusiasm and much of this enthusiasm is geared to the desire to learn to read. It is heartbreaking for parents and teachers to witness these highly motivated children struggle learning to read. Parents know how important the ability to read is and become frustrated and feel despair when their children experience reading failure. Parents feel helpless since they are not aware of what the problem is or what to do about it. Unfortunately, very many teachers also feel helpless and might become defensive since they feel responsible for helping these children learn to read and they have not been trained to help children with dyslexia. The good news is that reading scientists understand the cause of dyslexia and what to do to help individuals with dyslexia learn to read.

What is the Center for READing?                                                                                                 

The Center for Research, Evaluation and Awareness of Dyslexia (Center for READing; www.pittstate.edu/READing) is a university-based center devoted to providing affordable assessments and interventions for individuals with dyslexia and ADHD. The Center was established in 1997 after many years of doing research to determine the best way to identify individuals who have dyslexia and what to do about it. Our assessment tools are very accurate and our interventions have been very successful in helping thousands of individuals to become competent readers.

Although we are located in Southeast Kansas and most of our families are from Southeast Kansas, Southwest Missouri, Northeast Oklahoma and Northwest Arkansas, we welcome any family. In fact, we have had families come from Switzerland, where students are taught and learn to read in English, and from various States further then the four-state region. In fact, one family came to us from California this past summer since our methods work and are more cost effective than what can be obtained there even considering the cost of travel, meals and hotel stay.

We LOVE working with families of individuals who have dyslexia. The assessment generally takes 2.5 to 3.5 hours and includes an evaluation of reading and its subskills (phonological processing), spelling, comprehension, intelligence, and emotional and psychological functioning as it relates to education. A professional report is generated from the assessment results and parents come back for a feedback session in which the results are thoroughly explained. For families who live near Pittsburg, Kansas, individuals can receive our interventions. For those who live too far away, those families can take the Summary of Assessment report to their schools. For schools that do not know much about dyslexia, we also like to help teachers learn how to provide our interventions. The more teachers know about dyslexia and what to do about it, the more help students with dyslexia will get.

Most of our clients are in elementary school, but we also work with middle and high school students and adults. Our oldest adult was 60 years old! It is never too late to overcome dyslexia. If an individual is experiencing reading difficulties, we are interested in doing our best to help him or her. We also love to provide tours and to talk about dyslexia at the Center for READing. Come visit!

You might also like to read:

How do I sift throught all this Dyslexia and ADHD Information?

How do I sift through all this Dyslexia and ADHD Information?

The response from my recent posts about ADHD and Dyslexia have been overwhelming.  I am happy to share our family's story if it helps just one more child get the help they need to make school an enjoyable place to be.

Several questions I have been receiving I covered earlier in the summer, so instead of covering them again, I will put links to all the posts here.

My son has struggled with reading since first grade.  After lots of searching and help from friends we got an answer to the question Is it Dyslexia? Is it ADHD? Help!!

Then we had to figure out How does one deal with an ADHD diagnosis?

Everything started to fall into place with a trip to the Alltech Symposium where they posed the question What if We Could Eat Our Way Out of ADHD?  Then later in the summer we saw the results of using ADHD and I had to make myself ask the question Did That Really Happen?

 After a summer of reading tutoring and adding an Omega 3-DHA supplement to his diet, I needed a way to document the changes and not just what I thought I could see happening I needed real numbers.

If you are wondering what the signs of Dyslexia are and why we had our son tested please remember that 1 in 5 kids are born with Dyslexia and there are a number of signs not just flipping numbers and letters.

Pittsburg State (Pittsburg, Kansas) has an amazing Center for Research, Evaluation, and Awareness of Dyslexia.  If you are not lucky to leave close to Pittsburg State University or you leave close to a Dyslexia testing facility, but have been told it would be 6 months before your child could be tested, know that Dyslexia testing can be done anywhere there is internet with a great online testing tool that only costs $25!!

I have a friend in California that did lots of research and decided to bring her son to Kansas for a week of testing and tutoring.  She shared her story about what she found.

I hope this puts everything in one place where you can find what you are looking for.  If you have further questions, please let me know and I will continue to update this post as I have 3 guests posts about dyslexia next week already scheduled.

-A Kansas Farm Mom

Documenting Change

I am college educated as an Animal Scientist and while I knew I saw changes in my son while taking an Omega 3-DHA supplement, I still needed to see real numbers.  In April, he had taken the TOVA test, which gave me a baseline from which to judge progress.

Before school started, we finished his reading tutoring.  I insisted that we travel back to Pittsburg State for a follow up evaluation of the Dyslexia and ADHD.  His reading had improved over the summer (more on that in another post).  His TOVA score had gone up dramatically which is a good thing!  It went from -6.73 in April to -2.44 in August.  Anything below -1.80 is considered some level of ADHD.  I have been told by several professionals that to see that much change in the TOVA score without medication is absolutely amazing.  Most of the studies that I have seen had the children on Omega 3-DHA for 16 weeks.   Dr. Hurford at Pittsburg State was great to work with and was amazed with the change.  He is willing to work with us and retest him whenever we want or need. 

Now, we are through the first month of school and I see a young man that is more confident than ever.  He is the one who knows where things are kept in the house and can go find them.  He is the one who knows where his shoes are when we get ready to leave.  He was the one that was reminding me what projects needed finished for the fair.  He has struggled with tying his shoes and suddenly he can even do that!  I had no idea that ADHD kids have trouble tying their shoes until he was diagnosed.  I cannot begin to express how excited I am that I am getting a glimpse of my whole son now that we know how he ticks inside.

I am still trying to get him to eat fish, so he doesn’t have to take so many pills, but I am not winning that battle.  He does like the English walnuts my friend brought him from California and boiled shrimp is definitely a favorite.  If you have a good fish recipe, feel free to share it with me. 

I am sharing our story at the urging of several of the professionals that I worked with.  Over the last few months, I have had more than one person tell me 

“Let the child lead you.  Don’t lead the child.”

And 

“Parents are the best advocates for their children.  Help other parents find what might help their kids, too.”

I am not saying that everything we tried will help all the children struggling with ADHD and Dyslexia, but it is what has worked for us.  It has reduced the stress in our household 100% (not kidding) and homework has disappeared from his backpack.  I hope that something I shared here with you can help someone in your family or someone you know.  Feel free to share with anyone who might find it useful.

I do want to say thank you again for Alltech for inviting bloggers like myself to their symposium.  This year I learned about cutting edge info on dyslexia and last year I found something that has made a huge difference in our cow herd.

Throughout the month of October I will focus on Dyslexia as it is Dyslexia Awareness Month.  I have several guest bloggers lined up and welcome anyone who would like to share information about dyslexia either as a parent, student, tutor, teacher or researcher.

 You might find these other articles helpful:

Is it Dyslexia? Is it ADHD? Help!! 

How does one deal with an ADHD diagnosis?

-A Kansas Farm Mom

How does one deal with an ADHD diagnosis?

When we heard the ADHD diagnosis, I needed to reach out to ever resource I had that could help our family help him and I did that night.  I have a cousin who has 2 sons and a husband that are ADHD she pointed me to the Facebook page ADDITUDE and while I do like some of the ideas on the site others seem a bit out there for our family, but what works for one student may not work for the next one.  

I called one of our farm owners who happened to be the director of children’s services for a local mental health facility.  She was amazing at calming my fears and giving me suggestions of things to try before medications. 

I called a close friend who is a teacher.  She confided in me that she was ADHD.  She gave me suggestions of how to help in the classroom and with homework.  The first thing we did that night was make a morning routine list and put it in a plastic sleeve.  He could check off when he put on his socks, brushed his teeth, put on his shoes, etc.  It worked.  I wasn’t yelling 2 minutes after we should have left for school for him to find his shoes. 

What happened next, I never could have predicted.  I never dreamed anything could be placed in front of me like here is the next thing to try, the one thing that is on the breaking edge of ADHD research that could be the key, all while sitting at the Alltech Symposium opening session.  A conference I was attending as a blogger to help them with their social media and where I was supposed to be learning about animal health and animal nutrition.  I know some people don’t believe in higher powers, but something placed me at that conference to hear those words from Dr. Pearse Lyons, “Omega 3 DHA could be the key to ADHD.”  What?!  No medication?  No stimulants?  Nothing that will stop his desire to eat?  If you haven’t read it, please read my thought right after symposium called What if we Could Eat Our Way out of ADHD?  

We figured we had nothing to lose and everything to gain for our son, by starting him on a DHA supplement.  I worked with our local pharmacist, who is awesome by the way, to find a small capsule size and a high amount of Omega 3-DHA.  Then we waited to see if we could really see a change and then the unthinkable happened in the middle of wheat harvest the supplement that he could/would swallow was back ordered.  I didn’t have time to go anywhere else.  We were only a few weeks in to this trial, so we stopped.  My parents who were skeptical of this type treatment took them for an evening at the end of the week.  They demanded to know why I hadn’t called them to go get the pills from another store.  They couldn’t believe the change and the biggest thing was that my son could see the difference.  He told them that he was out of DHA and when he got more he was taking a WHOLE BUNCH!  OK, so we weren’t imagining things.  Skeptics saw it too. 

When we started the trial, we both agreed that we would evaluate him at the county fair.  If he could stay focused at the county fair in the show ring, then we might be on to something, if not we would talk to our doctor and get him started on a medication before school started.  Two weeks before the county fair at another local fair, I had to ask myself Did that Really Just Happen?  I wish I had a video of him showing the first week of May and the second week of July.  He is not the same child.  We practiced maybe 4 times…it was not practice that took him from kid staring off into the crowd to a showman.  I fully believe it was DHA.

I knew what we saw in him, but I still wanted further proof.  I need scientific data, so the next post is what the TOVA score said after 8 weeks on Omega 3-DHA.

 You might find these other articles helpful:

Is it Dyslexia? Is it ADHD? Help!! 

Documenting Change

-A Kansas Farm Mom

Is it Dyslexia? Is it ADHD? Help!!

As the school year began again this year, I had to look back on our summer and the month leading up to summer break.  While others were planning their summer vacations, I was trying to figure out what to do with a diagnosis of Dyslexia, something we suspected, and a potential diagnosis of ADD, something we did not see in our own son. 

Over the last 2 years, we have went through a change in schools hoping it would help a bright kid who couldn’t seem to figure out how to get that intelligence out if he had to read or write.  Verbally, he was/is brilliant.  I asked numerous times in both schools to have him tested for Dyslexia only to be told he was too young, they would inquire with other contracting agencies or to just be ignored. 

Luckily, a fellow 4-H mom with a son the same age struggling with the same issues and dealing with one of the same teachers suggested that one of the nearby state colleges might be able to help.  They both are “teacher colleges” and I happened to know that our long time babysitter was studying Elementary Education at Pittsburg State University.  A quick Facebook message to her started a ball rolling that would dramatically change our summer and one son’s outlook as we start the new school year.

 

What most people in the area don’t know is that PittsburgState University has a Dyslexia testing and tutoring program.  The program isn’t some high priced thing out of reach and only for the wealthy.  The testing and tutoring fees are on a sliding scaled for the parent’s income level and totally on the honor system.  They never asked for anything proving our income.

Our son went through 3 hours of testing. 

They started him with a test for ADHD.  Why?  Did you know many schools think kids are ADHD because they won’t do their work and they are actually Dyslexic and can’t read the worksheets given to them? 

He did extensive reading tests including: sounds, nonsense words, letter recognition, reading sentences and so much more.

The graduate student that administered the test gave him several short breaks to come out and sit with me while she set up the next test.  Each time he came out you could tell his brain was getting a real workout.  By the time he finished, he just seemed to stare into space sitting next to me and his favorite sitter that found the testing facility for us.  They really tested him and trying to reach everything in his little head.

We waited a week and got the results.  Let me say this:  Knowing your kid has a hard time learning and hearing someone list off all the things that he can’t do correctly may or may not be handled with the same amount of grace.  I have a wonderful friend who happens to be ADHD and Dyslexic.  She is actually on ADHD medication as an adult.  I messaged her immediately hoping she could give me a glimmer of hope because at that point in time I was about to lose all grace that I had in me and it was about to stream down my cheeks.  The Facebook message she sent me said this, 

“Remember the diagnosis doesn't change who he is or who you are. 

It's a huge step in helping understand how 

he ticks and helping him learn and grow.”

Oh wow!  Did I need to hear that!  She was right.  He is still the same kid he has always been and understanding how his brain works and what it needs to function is going to help him in the long run.  I can honestly say that hearing that he was seriously delayed in reading was hard to hear from someone else.  I wanted to make all kinds of excuses for the score he had on the TOVA testing (the ADHD test), but I also knew that I needed to be proactive.   

Over the next week, I will share with you what helped my son and our entire family.  I will cover resources we found concerning ADHD and how a writing this very blog got me an invitation to an animal health company’s, called Alltech, conference that would change how we went about treating the ADHD.

 You might find these other articles helpful:

How does one deal with an ADHD diagnosis?

Documenting Change

-A Kansas Farm Mom